


The Glory of Creation

by lustfulpasiphae (miraphora)



Series: Elyse Bredani [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Quest: In Hushed Whispers, Gen, Redcliffe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 01:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6496189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/pseuds/lustfulpasiphae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red lyrium. It’s the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes. It’s distressingly close—and discordantly jangling in the back of her head. It tastes like madness on the back of her throat.</p>
<p>//</p>
<p>The Inquisitor finds someone she did not expect to see again on this side of the Veil in Redcliffe--and it changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Glory of Creation

**Author's Note:**

> This is an alternate timeline from the Hawk of the Marches oeuvre. Someday, if I am very ambitious, it may be retcon'd into the main story line that leads to Dark Heart.

Red lyrium. It’s the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes. It’s distressingly close—and discordantly jangling in the back of her head. It tastes like madness on the back of her throat.

“Augh.” She spits to the side, grimacing, trying to block out the faint sound—persistent and relentless and unavoidable like ears ringing and popping.

“Still with me, Inquisitor?” That voice she recognizes—cultured, confident, cocky. The Tevinter mage.

She tilts her head, cutting her eyes towards his voice. He’s already on his feet, knee-deep in stagnant sea water. She knows that it’s sea water—the salt, even under the stone and hot sharp burn of the lyrium, is palpable on her tongue like hot blood. His silver eyes throw back a vermillion cat-gleam from the radiant light of the lyrium around them.

“Andraste fucking wept. What happened?”

His mustache trembles from a soft snort at her language. “Something, that’s for certain. I think this must still be the Redcliffe Castle, but it’s a lower level. And…positively riddled with red lyrium.” A shudder works its way through his muscular shoulders.

She looks at him sharply. “Can you hear it too?”

“Unfortunately.” He studies her. “I’m surprised that *you* can.”

She flexes her left hand, feeling the crackle of the Mark. “There’s a lot about me that’s surprising these days.” She pushes to her feet with a groan, feeling the bones in her spine and her knees crackle a bit—feeling her boots soaked through with the stagnant water. “These were new boots, too.”

The mage—Dorian, she reminds herself, though she hasn’t decided if they’re on given-name terms yet—tries to hide a smile at that, and she feels a little better. If they can share gallows humor, maybe they *are* going to be alright. “So all I’ve got is sea-soaked dungeon and red lyrium. You’re the mage scholar—what can you tell—“

The scrape of boots outside their cell cuts her off, and she reaches for her bow—Maker, she wishes she’d said to hell with diplomacy and come to this Void-blighted place armed to the teeth with her daggers as well, and not just the slim blade she always kept at the small of her back. Dorian swings his staff into a ready position beside her—he had certainly kept a Rift clear until she arrived at the chantry in the village, and it’s a relief to her to have another skilled fighter at her side. She never really became accustomed to fighting alone, and this place is disconcerting, and well—she’s glad to have him there beside her. That’s all.

Two armored men appear before the iron door of the cell, exchanging startled looks at it being occupied. “By the Elder God! What is this?!”

They burst in with short swords drawn, but Mira is already centered and bow drawn—she looses with a soft exhale, and the right guard sprouts variegated cream and brown feathers from his throat with a choked gargle. Time snaps back into motion after that first shot, Dorian stabbing the glowing orb at the tip of his staff towards the other guard and sending a fireball careening forward. Mira looses her second arrow into the path of the fire, the shaft flaring alight, fletching disintegrating, as her now molten-hot arrowhead sinks through the guard’s breastplate with a thud, quenching itself deep in his heart.

A fierce smile twists her lips, her yellow eyes eerily afire in the vermillion light of the lyrium. She hasn’t used that trick since—

“Ahah!” Dorian dangles a heavy iron keyring triumphantly. “Quite a clever trick, that bit with the arrow. I was going to tell you that I would protect you, my dear Inquisitor, but I think it is more likely to be a mutual rescue.”

Mira laughs, feeling a moment of relief as the sound drowns out the sound of the red lyrium. “Call me Mira. Please.”

He gives her an abbreviated bow with a flourish, an errant wave of his dark hair falling forward over his brow. “Mira. You must call me Dorian, then. ‘That Tevinter magister’ may become confusing shortly.”

“Have you figured out where we are, then?”

“Ah, not where, but when! This is certainly still the castle—but certainly not the castle we left. We must therefore be—elsewhen.”

Mira arches her brows at him, slinging her bow over her shoulder and wading to the cell door. “How is that even possible?”

He tries to explain it to her, and she can appreciate the enthusiasm of the scholar, but her understanding of magic has only ever been the rudimentary grasp of the observer. Highly technical magical theory is quite beyond her. “Dorian—“ she cuts him off mildly. “If we live through this, you’re more than welcome to write me a treatise. Right now all I need to know is—can you fix it?”

He turns a short circuit in the center of the room their cell empties into, face thoughtful. “Of course! Maybe—yes—certainly. I think. I need more information.”

That she can understand—and echoes the sentiment. “Then first order of business is to figure out where—or when—“ she nods to him in acknowledgement, “we are. Be on your guard.”

“Ladies first,” he murmurs with a flourish.

* * *

The passage at the top of the stairs branches left and right. One path is wreathed in red lyrium growths—the other is clear and lit with a torch. Mira shudders and climbs the steps to the cleared door. The discordant song in her head is like a minor chord progression with jangling intervals. The muscles in her neck and shoulders are tight and aching, and she keeps catching herself grinding her teeth. If she can avoid the evil red crystalline structures at any opportunity, she will take it.

Dorian follows at her back.

She has the opportunity to regret her choice almost immediately. The passageway above is bisected by a towering shard of lyrium, as thick around as two men. She gags into her hand as she edges around it, eyes scanning the empty cells around them. The passageway goes right, into a room with a door on the left wall. She trails her fingertips along the stones to her right, and feels a memory of sharp, stiff boxwood leaves against tender fingertips, a sweet voice—not her mother, a nursemaid? Maker this memory is old, faded, tarnished like old silver—chiming _Pick one direction and follow it, do not stray, poulette, lest the monster in the maze get you!_

“We must find the monster.”

She doesn’t realize she’s said it out loud until a warm brown hand clasps her shoulder with a cautious squeeze. “Mira. You must fight the song.”

She shoots him an exasperated yellow glance. “It’s not that. Just. A memory. Don’t mind me. I am quite sane.”

He makes a noncommittal sound, those silver eyes watchful. She keeps her bow out in her hand, and pushes through this new doorway. _Right—right—left—_

There is a soft sound of chanting in the next room. “Andraste blessed me—Andraste blessed me—My tears are my sins, my sins, my sins—“

Mira’s steps slow, and halt, before a cell. She recognizes the young elf within—her mind reaches through the discordant notes ringing in her ears for a name. Lysas. The sweet-faced mage from the village. “Lysas. Are you alright?” She reaches through the bars to gently touch his sleeve—Dorian is at her side with the keys, unlocking the door.

There is no reaction from the still, peaceful figure. His eyes are wreathed in a haze of red, gaze fixed upon the Infinite. A crust of reddish orange crystals has formed in tracks along his cheeks and the side of his nose, curvetting at the corners of his lips, clinging tenderly to his jaw.

“Tears.” Her voice is tight. “Lysas, you tender soul. Please answer me.” She enters the cell, gently placing her hands on his shoulders. His chant continues, breathy and pure, but he makes no reaction to her touch or voice—but—

An ooze of viscous red begins to crawl from the corners of his eyes. “Andraste freed me—Andraste freed me—My tears are Her hymn, Her hymn, Her hymn—“

An ugly sound escapes Mira’s throat, and Dorian’s hands are there again, on her shoulders, pulling her gently back. “There’s nothing left but an echo. We should—“ He has to clear his own throat against a sudden tightness. “We must continue. There is nothing we can do for him.”

She shrugs off his hands, turning with a rough throat-scratching cough and spitting to the side again. It’s like this bitter burning shit is in the *air* and trying to choke her. “I fucking hate this place,” she rasps, dragging her hand across her mouth.

“I hardly think it’s a seaside holiday myself, you know,” he mutters under his breath.

Mira’s shoulders twitch guiltily, and she tosses him an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh goodness. Those big golden eyes can be quite devastating, you know. Go on then, lead us to salvation.”

She rolls her eyes at him, and that’s better—if she can still find humor, she hasn’t succumbed to the lyrium’s song.

They advance. If at their backs, Dorian hears a soft, breathy voice rise in the sonorous intonations of Tevene, reciting a banned canticle—he says nothing.

* * *

The horrors of this place begin to blend into the terrible song in the back of her head. When they find Varric, she is both grateful that his mind is still mostly whole—and horrified to see his kind eyes wreathed in the red lyrium she knows he loathes and fears. The look on his face when she hands over Bianca is too much—she turns away, brusque in her haste to continue through this awful maze of madness and buzzing bitter lyrium and death.

It’s the faithful that strike her deepest. When they find Cassandra, she is not prepared for the steady recitation of a painfully familiar verse from Transfigurations.

“—and fire is her water.” It soothes the song in her mind, the incandescence of Cassandra’s faith burning off the bitter dissonant harmonies of the lyrium.

The crackling red haze in the woman’s resolute eyes pains her. This is a horrifying future, full of hopelessness and despair, and yet Cassandra seizes immediately upon the possibilities inherent in her presence here. Her belief is unflagging, and it bolsters Mira, making her for a moment trust that Dorian will be able to fix this—to undo this future and send them back to a turning point, so that she can prevent these horrors.

They make their way deeper into the maze. Sometimes she forgets herself, trailing her fingertips along the nearest wall, humming a strangely flat harmony to the song in her head—it reminds her a little of the parts of the Chant where the story of the defilement of the Golden City is told. It had always made her deeply uncomfortable to hear those harmonies: descending major chords and a flat descant echoing an octave above. Elyse had always relented when she complained, and they had sung a different canticle instead, Transfigurations, sometimes Trials. She tries not to think of Elyse in this place, but the song keeps jarring loose memories.

She keeps finding Dorian’s eyes trained on her, darkened to pewter with concern. She doesn’t have the energy to reassure him. She is hoarding her arrows as they go deeper, salvaging what she can, and is curt when she instructs Varric to do the same—he just nods in agreement, and the next time she starts humming, his buzzing harmony is there with her.

When they find the First Enchanter, and learn that Leliana is somewhere in the castle, Cassandra makes a sound of mingled hope and despair. Fiona’s eyes flash when Mira steps close to the iron bars of her cell, offering quietly, privately, an end—Dorian is behind her, speculating about the amulet he believes they must seek, and his ability to reverse its effects. Fiona’s lined face creases with the effort of a darkly intent expression.

“If—you fail. I will end it. But I would see—this place burn. First.”

Mira swallows hard, choking down the bitter burning lyrium taste on her tongue. “Maker guide you.”

Another flash. “Void take the Maker. You must be our guide. Stop him.”

Mira bows her head, and turns away.

* * *

A sense of urgency starts to build in Mira as they move through a barracks and left into a passage that is heavy with despair, and the sound of clattering chains and soft moans that echo without a clear source. The sounds join the cacophony in her head, and she shakes her lank hair back from her face, eyes burning like sulfur. She coughs again. She is trying not to think about what this place is doing to Dorian and herself—Fiona’s words echoing as a counterpoint to the dissonant lyrium song. _The longer you’re near it…_

She comes to the top of a ramp, and tilts her head to hear over the lyrium, as if that will help. There is a call and answer of stern male voices, chanting no hymn she’s ever heard—rejecting the Maker and the Chant of Light. Her upper lip skins back from her teeth a bit. She’s no devotee of an absentee Maker, but this perversion and filth is the antithesis of life. Rage is building in her heart.

Mira takes one step, two, and then there’s a woman’s voice—buzzing with multiple discordant harmonies in a bone-jarring plurality, “When I have lost all else, when my eyes fail me, and the taste of blood fills my mouth, then in the pounding of my—“

The words are cut short with a sharp blow and a cry.

A glass phial shatters on the floor, and Mira disappears in a flashing haze of smoke. She sweeps into the room like a tempest, strafing as her eyes encompass her targets, three burly armored men and a robed mage, and a small robed figure affixed to a stake of rampantly growing lyrium, a cloth sack over their head. Mira’s fingers are lost in a swift draw and release as her companions charge into the room behind her.

“Cassandra!” she shouts from the depths of her smoke, and the woman charges in, shield-slamming the mage before his cast can complete and strike Mira from her concealment. Mira angles herself around the room, losing track of the figure on the lyrium stake, going to one knee to steady a long drawn shot that, when she releases it, punches through chainmail to the soft belly of her target. He keeps coming, too stupid on adrenaline to realize his death is before him, and she readies another shot.

There is a light tug at the small of her back, and she jerks in surprise, her arrow going wide. The guard is bearing down on her, when from her side, the small robed figure appears, one hand wreathed in a fecund green glow, the other held low with—her dagger, damnit!

The slight figure leaps forward with an exultant shout, and slaps its glowing green palm to the guard’s face with a crack of bone, the sharp blade of the dagger drawing across his throat. The guard collapses to the side, Mira’s arrow snapping in half with the weight of his fall.

Mira is unable to stand, her legs weak and her hands nervelessly dropping her bow. Her eyes are wide and ringed in white, her face unutterably pale under the grime and gore of their long slog through the dungeons. She stares as the figure turns, petite, graceful—her skin is dark honey under the grime of captivity, her back exposed in terrifying lyrium burns where the thin fabric of the robe is rent with tears, her delicate skull covered in ragged curly tufts of bronze hair, scalp scarred and bleeding in places from the untender shearing of a sharp blade—

The face that stares at her is gaunt and harrowed with care, the eyes hollowed and sunken, lined in arcing tiny crystalline growths and studs of lyrium, the bow-shaped lips cracked and bleeding lyrium-tinged blood. Her nose is still slightly too large for her delicate face, and her cinnamon eyes are hazed and crackling with a dark vermilion energy and something else: a subverted silverite glow that flickers once, and is gone. “Blessed Andraste, Tawns. I’m glad to see you alive.”

The world goes fuzzy and grey at the corners of Mira’s vision, and she chokes out a tearing: “Ely—se,” before everything goes black.

* * *

She comes to slowly, surrounded by raised voices. Her head is cushioned on something soft—not as soft as she remembers, harrowed by harsh survival: Elyse’s lap.

“But I do not understand, who *ARE* you? The Inquisitor has told me she does not have anyone—she does not care for her family.”

A wry sound from above Mira’s head. Small hands are gently smoothing her hair, fingertips stroking at her temples, and she feels the warmth of Creation magic against her skin. Andraste wept, it feels like home, and she wants nothing more than to curl up in this madness, discordant lyrium song and all. But it can’t be right. None of this is right. “Do I look like a stray Trevelyan cousin to you? Please.”

Mira stirs. Maker, all she needs is someone saying something injudicious and backwards about Rivainis or apostates and then there’ll be trouble—

Conversation stills, and there’s a clank as Cassandra goes to a knee beside her. “Inquisitor!”

Mira opens her eyes, blinking up slowly. Those cinnamon eyes are waiting for her gaze. She reaches up without thinking to touch the curving, artful, clearly deliberate arabesques of lyrium growth studded out from the corners of that bow-shaped mouth and the harrowed hollows of her eyes. A small dark hand wraps around Mira’s fingers before she can touch, squeezing gently. The corners of Elyse’s eyes crinkle slightly even under the shadows.

“Careful, Tawny. Don’t want you to burn your fingers. We still need your bow.” There’s that echoing buzzing plurality again in her voice, and Mira frowns with confusion. It’s not the same as the buzz behind Varric’s voice, or Cassandra’s. There’s—more there.

“You’re dead.” Her free hand fumbles into the neck of her leathers, clumsily fishing out the phylactery—cracked and empty and dark. “Dorian, you were wrong. We didn’t—we can’t have gone forward. We have to be—before. But how?!” Tears are burning in her eyes, making tracks through the dirt on her face. “You can’t be here,” she whispers, hating how weak she sounds.

Elyse takes the phylactery in her hand, her mouth twisted. “I’m not sure about all of this before and after, but don’t you worry your head anymore about me.”

Dorian pipes up with a slightly pedantic, “Time travel, she means. The Inquisitor and myself have been transported through time—“

“Good. So we’ll get you both out of here.” Elyse gives Mira’s hair a last gentle ruffle, then pokes her shoulder. “Up you go, you fainting idiot. You’re putting my legs to sleep.”

Mira doesn’t know what to believe, or to think. This nightmare future has taken a turn she could not have expected, and now she doubts everything. She looks at Dorian as she stands, and it costs her to open her mouth, to ask: “Am I mad?”

He frowns slightly, peering into her eyes, then glancing at Elyse. “She’s really here, if that’s what you’re asking. As to the other…has the song gotten louder?”

The song, in fact, has gotten harder to hear. She touches her temple, feeling a bone-deep relief at the lack of the tooth-grating buzzing, and her eyes slide toward Elyse. Her friend—Maker more than that, the only woman in her life to fill the role of mother, sister, and dearest friend—is tucking her dagger into the ragged belt of her robe, and bending to retrieve Mira’s bow.

A gasp tears from Mira’s lips again, as Elyse’s bent posture exposes the lyrium burns in her back. “Elyse!” She starts forward, her hands reaching, but the petite woman twists away and puts her bow into her hands.

“It’ll keep, Tawny. Stop fussing. There are demons and men and other things between us and the end of this nightmare.”

Varric sets a new bolt into Bianca and cranks the bow decisively. “She’s right, you know. We need to get you two out of this shithole—so this shithole doesn’t *happen*.”

“And Leliana is still out there—we must find her!” That from Cassandra, who has found her resolve again, and let the mysteries of the Inquisitor’s friend go in favor of the task ahead.

Mira gives a heavy, sharp breath, trying to find her center—it’s easier than it was before, now that the lyrium isn’t as loud.

“Right.”

_Deeper into the maze…_

* * *

They move through the castle faster with their tiny army, after they find Leliana—harrowed and hollowed Leliana with her frightful eyes and gaunt face, and her cold, economical dispatch of her torturer. Mira’s heart aches, constantly, now that the lyrium buzz is faint and her mind can focus on the torment of this place. If she fails—if Dorian can’t reverse the amulet’s power and send them back—if the Elder God rises to supremacy… All is lost.

Her companions’ banter draws her back out of the maze in her head. Dorian hasn’t stopped talking since they found Elyse and Leliana—his hunger for knowledge is insatiable, matched only by their singular disinterest in indulging it.

“Varric and Cassandra don’t have the growths—and yours are so…uniform. How—“

Elyse snorts. “I got bored.”

Dorian blinks, his stride hesitating a beat before he continues, “But what does that even mean—“

Elyse swings around, walking backwards, her dark eyes critical as they sweep up and down Dorian’s flashily-garbed figure. “Firstly, Tawny’s other companions aren’t mages. The lyrium likes us—we’re a particular treat. Secondly, I. Got. Bored. If my flesh is going to erupt with this monstrous crystal shit, it’ll damned well do it on my terms. Thank you very much for asking. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to focus on finding this bootlicker Alexius and his trinket before the Elder God decides to get much elder.” She swings back around to face forward, tossing over her shoulder, “Why don’t you tell Mira a little about what she’s up again, eh, Magister?”

“Altus!” Dorian yelps indignantly. “I do not consort with Elder Gods and—and—“

She gives a sharp laugh. “You know an awful lot about this trinket for an innocent.”

Mira opens her mouth without thinking. “I know he helped research it, Elyse.” There, she almost doesn’t choke with shock over her name that time. “It’s how he’s going to get us back…I hope.”

“He’d better,” is all Elyse says.

* * *

The broken husk of a man that Alexius has become is anticlimactic, when they finally break through his impossible door and confront him in his throne room. Mira is in constant motion, using her powders to gain an advantage when possible, skidding around columns to evade the Magister’s relentless assault. Elyse is ever at her side, without a staff and yet deadly in the way of a healer who walks the knife’s edge between life and death, her magic turned to harm or to healing as needed.

Lightning lances past the column Mira ducks behind, and a warm green glowing hand is there, caressing briefly with healing, before Elyse darts away again, back into the fray, Mira’s dagger at her side still. When Mira cries out Cassandra’s name, Elyse is there, with healing touch and a defensive slash to drive back the demon, helping the Seeker back to her feet—though there is a darkness and a silver flicker in her eyes that Mira doesn’t have time to question.

When it is over, Alexius is a shattered and hopeless man. Leliana and Cassandra stand together at one side, the Seeker’s head bowed for a moment with exhaustion, before Leliana’s hand gently cradles her elbow, squeezing it. The same hand that wielded the blade that slit Felix Alexius’ throat. Varric is at ease against a nearby column, fussing with Bianca like a father with his infant. Mira stands on the raised dais, catching her breath, breathing easier here where there is less of the red lyrium taint in the air. Elyse is at her side, cinnamon eyes fixed on Dorian where he turns the amulet over in his hands, muttering in Arcanum.

“This is going to take me longer than I thought—an hour—maybe two—“

An eldritch roar echoes outside, thunderous and terrible. Elyse’s eyes slide closed, an unintelligible murmur leaving her cracked lips. Mira steps forward woodenly, her bow heavy in her hand, her quiver light on her back. Cassandra straightens, her back stiff with resolve, her face shining—for a moment, her eyes are alight with more than the red of the lyrium, and Mira remembers—

“A dragon.” The word is nearly a work of art in that rolling Nevarran accent. “Maker, guide my hand.”

Mira casts a desperate look back at Dorian. “Dorian, please tell me you can work quicker!”

“Genius takes time, damnit!” His quip is thready with tension.

Her companions are forming up before her—Varric catching the Seeker’s eye with a silent nod and a rueful smile, Leliana testing her bowstring and selecting an arrow. Elyse—Elyse is before her, her cinnamon eyes alight with red fire and that strange, elusive flicker of silverite.

“Tawny. You precious idiot. Don’t do anything foolish.” Her eyes flick to Dorian. “You get her out of here, Magister, or you won’t like the consequences. And don’t let her try to save us. She is forever trying to throw herself away on hopeless causes.”

“Elyse!” Mira’s throat tightens, but she forces her voice through. “You have to—you’re coming with us. You have to. I can’t—“ She reaches out, catching one of Elyse’s slim hands hard in her own, forgetting the thinness of the bones and wasting flesh beneath her hand in her emotion. “I’m so sorry—I’m so sorry I disappointed you. I promise it won’t happen again. Please come with me. I can’t stand to lose you again. Not like—“ She is babbling and nearly incoherent, frantic, because Elyse has that look on her face, that “I am a woman with responsibilities, with lives resting in my hands” look, and Mira knows it now, she knows exactly how it feels, and she can’t lose Elyse to it again, she can’t, she won’t—

Her friend, her sister-of-the-heart, smiles at her gently, extricates her hand, and reaches up to cup her small hands around Mira’s face, disregarding the way it tugs at the burns on her back. “Tawny, my sweet friend, this is just a bad dream. You will wake from this, and I will come to you. You’ll see. Now go to sleep—rest—“

Mira tries to protest, opens her mouth, but the world is fuzzing out around the edges—not quite like a faint, but like the encroaching of sleep. She makes a fitful, intolerably sad sound, and the last sight she has is of Elyse’s brown eyes surrounded by glinting vermilion lyrium crystals.

Elyse grunts as the tall Marcher sags bonelessly, having to brace her whole body behind the woman to ease her down into a slump next to the Tevinter mage. “Maker’s mercy. She’s like a damned druffalo when she’s out.”

Dorian shoots her a look, wondering, and yet knowing—understanding. Elyse glares at him again. “I don’t trust you *or* her to know better. Now get that fucking trinket working and get her out of here before the world ends.”

She brushes Mira’s hair back from her broad, stupid, sweet face. The last time they saw each other, they had both been so angry—and over what, in the end? A world that was truly ending, not just a war of principles—though Maker knew, it was still that, under the veneer of apocalypse—but… Had it been worth it, sending her away? It was just like Mira, Elyse thinks to herself, to be sent away for her safety, and end up the fucking savior of the world.

“You idiot.”

She brushes her small hands on her robes—Andraste wept, she is so filthy, it’s deplorable. Well, it won’t matter for long. “Work fast, Magister. You have about as long as it takes for an Elder God to chew through a Rivaini apostate.”

The dwarf and the Seeker—and Maker, hadn’t that struck her to see a Seeker at Mira’s side, after Dairsmuid; hopefully she’d get to learn the story there and hopefully it wouldn’t break her heart—are waiting at the doors. Elyse walks towards them, flames sparking and spreading along her arms, licking along her wasted flesh.

They walk out into hell.

The demon horde is not the worst of it. Over all, there is the swooping, twisted, ruined visage of the Archdemon—a terror wrought in a shape that makes the Seeker quiver with purpose. They hold the horde back as long as they can, and Elyse knows her healing draws it out longer than it would have lasted without her—and is grateful for that, for the time it buys. It seems she is always buying time with the dregs of her life.

It’s a choice she is happy to make—again and again.

The other companions fall first, and Elyse watches the way the Seeker’s hand reaches, in her collapse, for the dwarf.

More demons are coming—a relentless tide of them. But Elyse knows the archer is at her back, the last line of defense within. And she has greater prey.

She is darting and swift like wind, like the roaring flame, implacable like the crash of the sea and steady like the earth as she feels the presence in her head coming forward. Her voice echoes and trembles with a ringing power, a harmony of the voiceless and unknowable given voice:

“Maker, though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure—“

As her small form climbs up a broken pillar, hands hot with fire finding purchase in carven stone, ice forming anchors for her feet, the Chant rings out in a plurality of voices, harmonic and echoing through the howling winds that stir at her profligate power.

She stands, swaying and tiny in the face of the stooping flight of the Archdemon, her body incandescent with silverite light, her eyes full of the Holy Light of the faithful—of Faith.

“What you have created—no one can tear asunder—“

The Archdemon’s gaping maw snaps down to catch at her taunting form—glowing and lit with the Light of the Maker’s heaven. Elyse screams, her final words echoing with a multitudinous cry: “I HEAR THE GLORY OF CREATION!”

Fractures of silverite light tear along her small frame, flowing through the hands she grasps around the clutching muzzle of the dragon’s shape. The fractures spread—eating along demonic flesh, carried forth by her Faith, by the Spirit riding within her, filling her—the Light spreading, and where it touches, the Taint is healed, and the Archdemon falters.

The small figure in its jaws is as nothing—just a glowing fire of Creation—but mighty, oh She is mighty in her Faith—

When the Archdemon finally succumbs, its form riddled with Creation, undone by the healing of its corruption, it crashes through the doors of the castle—into an empty throne room. A small form lays still in its jaws, feeling the last Grace fade away with her final breath—a cold and broken:

_Allelu!_


End file.
